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garage heating solutions?

vandelay industries

vandelay industries

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i know, i know: i should have asked this months ago.

Anyways, is there anything you'd like to suggest and/or anything new on the market.


The kerosene heater i'm using works well heat-wise, but sometimes there is a lot of black smoke/ suut especially on start up and it's not easy to get rid of that. So, i'd like to look into other methods such as electric or even steam?
 
Heat rises— spend most of your time and money on insulating the ceiling and roof, then the walls to a degree. In the long run the costs of operating your heating appliance will then be less.

I listened to someone who told me that, after spending 2 Vermont winters heating my garage with a gigantic salamander heater. Know what? He was right. A tiny little Woodstove is all I need after insulating it. Put the woodstove in storage during warm weather.
 
trukman1 said:
Just wondering how long a 20# LP cylinder lasts? Actually, is that the tank it runs off of? Can't tell from picture. Thanks
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I use a 20 lb BBQ tank. It probably lasts 8 hours of "run time". When it's really cold out I'll run it for 15-30 minutes then shut it off for a while. My garage is insulated and sheet-rocked which does help.
 
Just a 'lil update:

i "decided" to continue to use kerosene (because i really had no choice....either use it or freeze...)

1) The smoke/soot on start up, i think, has been solved; i believe it was from the wick sitting for months without being used---and there was some waxy residue on it. A few uses, i think, burned it off. Also, fine-tuning of the wick height helped to get a clean burn. So, there's really no smoke or odor anymore. After you shut it off, sometimes it does smell like a bus station, but i like that.......

2) With crappy levittown insulation, that is to say NO insulation, the heater gets the garage not "toasty," but comfortable enough where i don't feel cold and could work for hours. It sort of feels like having the A/C on high in the summer which takes a little getting use to with a winter mindset. The garage is, i think, roughly 430 square feet with, i believe a 10ft ceiling but could be 12?

i'm from the school of less insulation vs. more insulation; This way you get more air circulation (important especially now, with covid). Ok, you don't get that cozy/toasty feel, but: Less headaches, sickness etc. Did you ever notice how easy it is to get sick while riding on an airplane? That's because they are trying to get better mpg by recirculating the air vs. taking in outside air.
(Note: if any avation types are out there and this is wrong, let me know. But i did read that from a pilot)

i am "sold" on kerosene for now. It is about $3.16 per gallon now where i'm at, and one gallon lasts about 8 hrs.

Another side benefit of kerosene is, i hear you can cook hot dogs on top of the heater. i haven't tried it yet, though.
 
Get a fan. I have a ceiling fan in the shop. Probably takes 4 times as long to warm up without the fans on, all the heat rises to the top and never gets warm where I need it. Now I light the wood stove and turn on the fan, nice and warm in about 30 min. A box fan will get you a similar result. Fan on low just to mix the air around.
 
Long-term an unvented heater isn't very good for you. I did a couple winters with a propane construction heater in a large garage well-closed in, but poorly insulated. Every weekend of wrenching was a 20# cylinder, which really adds up - and it wasn't always very warm. With some insulation improvements, a ceiling fan and a wood stove, there were no more fumes and could keep temps at 60-70 degrees all day. With remodeling the house, doing various woodwork there is always scrap lumber on hand and with woods around I could easily gather/make enough fuel that I haven't paid to heat the garage for years (to be clear, I also heat the house with wood, so I have all the equipment, extra scraps, etc.) Plus, a woodstove DRIES the water out of the shop, while unvented combustion WETS the air. Bringing the shop up to temp makes all the tools sweat and can make things rust.

If liquid fuel is your long-term approach, get something vented (for health and safety) and find yourself a decent sized storage tank. Filling BBQ tanks is not only inconvenient, but the fuel costs about 2.5x what a propane truck will fill you for. Now if you have natural gas you're a fool not to pipe that out to the shop....
 
sweetk30 said:
Modine hotdawg . Been doing great in my shop now for years . 55-60* is were i leve it . Anymore i fire off the wood stove.
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I am a Modine dealer, sell the hot dawg series all the time. I never go back to work on them, they are rock solid.
 
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Mine is the BIG 125k btu . Shop is over 2k sq ft and shop roll up doors are not super tight seal .

I always wounder what a good cycle time is . And if there is a programabe t-stat to use that lets me set min / max tam to cycle.
 
sweetk30 said:
Mine is the BIG 125k btu . Shop is over 2k sq ft and shop roll up doors are not super tight seal .

I always wounder what a good cycle time is . And if there is a programabe t-stat to use that lets me set min / max tam to cycle.
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Cycle time is a tough one with shops, sizing shop heaters is real difficult, tons of variables. My salesman won't even help with sizing them because they don't want to be blamed if they go too small. You need to do a heat load calculation, which is kind of a nightmare and usually comes out a bit on the conservative side anyway. I like a nice big shop heater so the recovery time is fairly quick when you have big doors open letting all the heat out. Modine makes even bigger ones but they don't have the hotdawg name. We just did a 250k btu in a large shop. We hooked it up to a Honeywell 6000 wifi t-stat, the customer can check temp and turn the heat up from his phone before he goes out to the shop. I would have to check the t-stat specs but I think the Honeywell 6000 series lets you adjust all the parameters like cycles per hour and min/ max type of things. The 4000 series might too, its all in the installer menu, you press and hold a couple buttons and get into settings they don't want the average home owner messing with. There are some real cool t-stats now, full color screens with wifi and lots of advanced settings.
 
Ya i went 125k for faster recovery and if i was to paint in winter times i can heat shop with it and not wood stove back drafting from air pull in paint bay .
 
vandelay industries said:
e that.......

2) With crappy levittown insulation, that is to say NO insulation, the heater gets the garage not "toasty," but comfortable enough where i don't feel cold and could work for hours. It sort of feels like having the A/C on high in the summer which takes a little getting use to with a winter mindset. The garage is, i think, roughly 430 square feet with, i believe a 10ft ceiling but could be 12?

h.
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Which Levittown? I'm from Willingboro NJ, which is levittown NJ.
 
runamok151 said:
Which Levittown? I'm from Willingboro NJ, which is levittown NJ.
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Sorry for the slow reply---i forgot about this thread. So you are originally near Philly. i'm south near shitty trashington/baltomoron.

levitt was a real piece of work----a Jew who wouldn't sell houses to other Jews! And levitown "construction" is shit on top of that....... My uncle FELL THROUGH the garage attic. And years later, so did i----i was half hanging in between the attic and ground with my legs dangling in the air...
 
So, anyways, i actually measured the garage this time and it's actually 488 sq. ft, which is admittedly larger than most garages, i think?

Runamok151, may be familiar with the layout, as he, also had to endure this type of substandard atrocity passed off as a "house."

It's the "colonial," so you've got two car garage with a "cubby hole"/"workshop"/storage area in front of one of the cars which is about 12'X 7' ish. Ceiling is 9' or 10'?
 
I dont have access to nat gas, so I use electric wall mounted 4000w units. Clean, cheap and no fuel to worry about.
And whats up with the Black Magic funnycar?
 
I was going to do a Mr Heater NG in my garage but got all fancy with this Ductless Aire AC/heater mini-split. Cost was more than the
$500 Mr heater being it was $1400 plus a few things like the electrical wire/conduit. It was nice not having to run a vent out the roof or tapping in the gas line. Cooling my garage in the summer was more of a concern to me since it stayed fairly warm in the winter but its an attached 4 car with insulation. Now its 71 in the garage when its almost 100 degrees out. Should do well in the winter too.

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